


this is what you want, to belong, so they like you (but do you like you?)

by OfFandomTrash



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, because eleven should be confident, but a promised happy ending, i ship el and confidence, i will fight for them, must protect, otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 07:26:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13993386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfFandomTrash/pseuds/OfFandomTrash
Summary: She didn't have makeup caking her face when they met— just dirt.She was soaked by the rain, clad only in an impossibly large 'Benny's Burgers' t-shirt, and bare on the top of her head..And he still thought she was pretty.





	this is what you want, to belong, so they like you (but do you like you?)

She spent a lot of time in the bathroom that morning.

It was a Saturday— a day made, unofficially, a day in which Hopper snuck El's friends over to the cabin so that her next ( final? ) year in hiding went over smoothly. They'd made an agreement— a compromise. Hopper promised things would be different, and Eleven would try to understand when things couldn't be.

The point was, they were both trying. And allowing a day every week for her friends to come over seemed like the first step in the right direction.

Today, however, was the first day since the secret meetings began that Eleven was a little less than enthusiastic the morning of.

Her brunette ringlets sat unruly atop her cranium in seemingly irreversible disarray. She burned holes through the mirror, frustrated with both her reflection and herself for having hair that didn't sit properly, or go up into different styles, or extend past her shoulders..

She thought of Max. And then Nancy. And then, even Joyce. Eleven didn't know very many females in person ( hell, she didn't really know many people at all. ) Nonetheless, she grew up around the bad men— men who shaved her head and didn't care what she looked like. Men who taught her that her importance wasn't that of what she looked like, but rather what she could /do./ And even now, most of her new ( and only ) friends consisted of males. The only girls she knew were pretty, so Eleven thought girls were /supposed/ to be pretty.

Was it really her fault that she'd never really been a girl in the lab?

  
A hesitant knock on the door pulled Eleven from the thoughts in her head— memories she had been drowning in. The jump of alarm that had coursed throughout her was inevitable. She'd been alone for nearly an hour while Hop collected the members of the party and she certainly hadn't heard the sound of the cabin's only entrance door open.

( not over the sound of her self-analyzing, anyway. )

Frustration similar to that of which she felt the night she'd run away from Mike and Dustin when she'd unintentionally hurt Lucas and spent in the woods, looking down at her reflection in the pond held on to her as she reluctantly opened the door. She, too, felt like screaming exactly as she had then— only this time, she did not have a wig to place atop her head and momentarily erase the before image with a better one... with a /prettier/ one.

On the other side of the bathroom door stood a very expectant, overly enthusiastic Mike who was (literally) ready to welcome her with open arms— arms in which Eleven was more than happy to fall into and surrender herself to.

— Mike thought she was pretty.

As soon as his long, slender arms dropped all too quickly from where they had snaked themselves around her waist, he gently ushered her toward the living room where the remainder of their friends were waiting.

Hopper's flannel hung loosely and awkwardly from her bony physique, extending well past her fingertips and hugging no parts of her body. El tugs subconsciously at her clothing— having not acquired her own wardrobe due to Hopper's reluctance to take the risk of being caught clothes shopping for a young, teenage girl— as she offers a small smile in the direction of the second quietest member of the party, Will, as he catches her inconspicuously pulling at the material of the flannel.

"El!" Dustin is, but of course, the first to gather Eleven up into his arms and nearly crush both her bones and nearly all of the air from her lungs. "I haven't seen you in /forever./"

Lucas rolls his eyes from somewhere over Eleven's shoulder. "It's been a week,  and even Mike didn't miss her /that/ much."

"A /week/, Lucas. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, planted a flag, and took one giant leap for mankind in less time than that." Dustin retorted, a 'matter-of-fact' lilt in his tone as he released El from his bear hug in order to resume his and Lucas' typical banter.

Eleven wandered away from the two boys and their antics, joining Will on the sofa and watching as Mike, inevitably, proceeded to take the spot available on her other side.

"El, we brought a lot of games to keep you company during the week." Will broke the silence amongst the three on the sofa.

"And enough movies to keep you on your ass all week." Max inputs, dropping and sinking onto the edge of the couch, bumping the other three.

El glances over at the red-headed girl, surveying her long and radiating, curly ringlets that cascaded down her backside. El contemplated what it would feel like to have so much hair on her head until Mike gently gains her attention by nudging her side with a lanky arm and a bony elbow. "You okay, El?" He confirms, furrowing dark brows low on his freckled features.

Before Eleven is able to manage /whatever/ response waiting on her tongue,( to be honest, she was stuck between a half-truth and friends don't lie ) Dustin reaches for the plethora of movies Max had been referring to, holding the bag in the air and answering for Eleven. "You worry too much, Saint Michael. She's bored." He declares decisively, a large, toothy ( or rather lack thereof ) smile stretching his lips. He rummages through the CDs, a frown creasing his brims as he fishes out one in particular.

"E.T? Really?" He directs an accusatory glance in Mike's direction, a dumbfound/disappointed expression coloring his skin. "Foreign specimen with superpowers found by a group of kids? Kept hidden in a house? Ring a bell?"

A collective round of eye-rolls fill the space, Mike snatching the movie from Dustin's grip defensively.

"You choose, then, Dustin the all-knowing." Mike deadpans, reverting his gaze from the curly-headed boy.

"With pleasure." Dustin, then, retrieves yet another unfamiliar movie cover box from the bag hanging from his arm. "The Breakfast Club." He announces, raising a palm skyward to halt the inevitable onslaught of slander from his friends. "It's a classic and El's /never/ seen it. First and foremost, we're the party. But, if we weren't, we'd be the club in this movie, right?" He lifts knowing eyebrows, popping the case open and injecting the VHS tape into the proper compartment.

Nobody made any indication of rebuttal— most likely because Dustin's first point had been very valid: El's never seen it.

The cabin was fairly submerged in darkness on its own— the window curtains constantly drawn so that nobody could see in, and nobody could see out. 'Don't be stupid' rules 101. The sunlight stayed primarily on the opposing side of the window, leaving dark shadows in its place around the room.

Switching her gaze to the screen, El does her best to concentrate on the storyline all the while Mike occasionally leans into her side to whisper a plot point in her ear that particularly confused her.

Not too long after the movie began, the group started to talk amongst themselves during certain scenes— one being the first time the lead female stars appeared on screen.

"My mom says Molly Ringwald made the entire film. She is in /love/ with her." Lucas shares his train of thought aloud, rolling mocha colored eyes at the screen.

"It's Molly Ringwald. /Everybody/ is in love with her. Now shut your damn mouth and let El watch the movie." Dustin is quick to scold, shoving Lucas' arm so that he collides with the arm of the sofa.

"She's a model," Max deadpans, eyeing the screen with obvious indifference. "Being pretty and admired is what models do."

Pausing, Eleven's almond colored eyes shift in Max's direction. El knew the word 'model' from Hopper's given definition of it only days before when she'd called the girls on television pretty and he told her they were all models. He'd launched into a long speech about how they 'set an unrealistic image of beauty' for girls in their society and that they were 'wearing a lot of makeup.' Ultimately, when it seemed it was taking approximately every nerve in her brain to grasp everything he was saying, he settled for a quick summarization of "they're partially fake, El."

( That had been the most confusing part of his explanation— even though she knew he was clearly trying to provide a very stripped down answer, because she'd just watched them on television and how could they be fake? )

She contemplates Max's comment with an intensity she hadn't given the others.

"Model?"

The question rolls from her tongue, watching her friends with a calculated gaze— though it seemed to flicker over Mike once or twice more.

Mike, who had deeply misinterpreted the question El poses, launches into a brief definition of what the word means— thinking El had to have been asking out of lack of understanding.

"Models are people who are typically paid to be pretty. Not always paid, though, sometimes they just take pictures and stuff.." Mike shrugs his shoulders, attempting to provide a very generalized definition and idea of the word.

"Models are pretty. Like you, El." He could feel the heat rush to his cheeks before he noticed the snickers, eyes trained solely on Eleven so that he didn't have to look at the teasing faces of his friends.

Eleven relied heavily on his opinion for validation. Her ringlets were only slightly brushing her shoulders now, but it had been considerably shorter ( non-existent ) when they met and he still thought she was pretty.. good. He thought she was pretty good.

She didn't have makeup caking her face when they met— just dirt. She was soaked by the rain, clad only in an impossibly large 'Benny's Burgers' t-shirt, and bare on the top of her head..

And he still thought she was pretty.

She believed him when he said it, then, because she was gullible and had been lied to before, and Mike told her that friends didn't lie.

So, she believed him when he said she was pretty with a face of makeup and a blonde wig, and when he said she was pretty when the makeup shed and the wig came off.

In the lab, she was an experiment. But here, with Mike, she was pretty.

She shifts uncertain eyes to him, narrowed and light brown as she lifts an index finger and touches it gently to her chest like she'd done to affirm her name as Eleven when she'd first met Mike.

"Pretty.. good?"

She guesses, hesitant that she understood him correctly.

Mike's features grew significantly softer, physically feeling all of the snickers in the room die down with El's comment and the uncertainty laced within her words.

"No El, just pretty."

The room came alive with agreement, words piled atop of compliments that Eleven pretended to understand at the speed in which they were all speaking.

Finally, Dustin silenced the room and slung an arm around Eleven's shoulders. "Sure they're models, but none of them hold a candle to you, El."

Eleven wanted really hard to understand what the hell that meant— confusion coloring her face as her brows furrowed and she met his gaze expectantly and with large, brown eyes.

Chuckling, he waved it off and elaborated. "It means they don't compare to you."

\-------

When the movie was finished, most of the members of the party began to clean up the snacks and blankets they had littered across the floor. Because of this distraction, they do not notice Mike and Eleven's absence when he laces his fingers through hers and leads her to the bathroom. Quietly shutting the door behind him and ignoring Eleven's infinitely confused eyes, Mike faces her in the mirror; standing directly behind her and studying her reflection.

"You have the most beautiful brown eyes." He points out, a soft smile ghosting over his lips gently before glancing at another one of her features. "You have really pretty hair that grew really fast. It's curly, like mine."

El thought he was pretty, too. From the hair atop his head to the freckles painting his skin to the toes at his feet.

"You're good. Pretty." Eleven's broken, slightly inarticulate statement fell from parted lips. Her illiteracy prevented her from saying what she really meant, but she thought what she had said sufficed.

He /was/ good. Good for finding her in the rain and sheltering her from the world she'd really only just joined. Good for feeding her eggos and letting her play with his toys when he was at school. Good for being the first person to treat her as if she were no different— as if she were a person all the same. Good for seeing past her abilities and, instead, seeing /her./

Eleven may not know everything that she should know, but she was certain of one thing:

Mike Wheeler was good.

 

( And he thought she was pretty. )

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I love you all!


End file.
